A CRIME syndicate with links to former pro-Indonesian militias supplied
drugs to youth gang members involved in violent attacks in East Timor.

This is the finding of an investigation ordered by East Timor's
President Jose Ramos Horta.

It also found girls as young as 12 were being trafficked into East
Timor for prostitution, some at a brothel frequented by United Nations
personnel.

A report on the investigation, obtained by The Age, criticises the
Australian-led International Stabilisation Force (ISF) and United Nations
police in East Timor for failing to "recognise the importance and
gravity of this new phenomenon" in the troubled country of 1 million.

"The swiftness in which international drug syndicates mobilised
into Timor Leste (East Timor) was underestimated by the international
security forces," the report said.

But within days of Mr Ramos Horta receiving the report last month, East
Timor and United Nations police began raids in the capital, Dili, and
arrested almost 100 Timorese and foreigners on drugs and prostitution
charges.

Mr Ramos Horta is recovering in Royal Darwin Hospital from gunshot
wounds received in a rebel attack on February 11.

The confidential report said girls aged between 12 and 15 were brought
from Indonesian West Timor and held in safe houses in Dili and "only
brought out on request" to a brothel operated by a drugs and human
trafficking syndicate.

The head of the syndicate, an Indonesian, had "strong and
lucrative" links to martial arts gangs, the report said.

The report identified two shipments of methamphetamine, known as sabu
sabu or ice, into Dili in December by a syndicate "controlled by
Timorese-Indonesian nationals with clear ties to, and possibly funded by,
ex-militia elements in West Timor".

There is no suggestion that Indonesian authorities are behind any
illegal activities in East Timor.

The report said the arrival in Dili of crime syndicates required
"serious attention" but warned that without extensive
surveillance before police raids the syndicates "might begin to
operate in a more clandestine and careful manner, making them harder to
track and target".

The British Government is being urged to order warrants for the arrests
of two former Indonesian military leaders linked to the killings of the
Balibo Five.

A Liberal Democrat MP, Don Foster, has requested the Government to ask
Interpol to issue arrests for the Indonesians, named last year by a NSW
coroner in connection with the 1975 killings of the newsmen in East Timor.
Two of the victims, Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie, were British. Two
were Australian and one was from New Zealand.

East Timor security forces have seized a cache of homemade weapons and
detained a foreign citizen suspected of helping rebel soldiers involved in
the attack on the country's leaders.

Filomeno Paixao, head of the Joint Command, said homemade weapons
including a grenade, knives and arrows, as well as 500 military uniforms,
had been found in the house of a foreigner near Dili.

"We have brought the man to the investigation unit because he is
believed to be helping rebels," he said.